Fuerteventura: Bonsoir, have a good evening, gracias.

As you know, we like to head south during one of the shorter school holidays. It's never something that we plan a long time in advance, but last week's February holiday was an exceptionally last minute affair. Dismayed by the weather forecast for Bordeaux, I found cheap tickets to Fuerteventura online on Thursday, then booked accommodation on Friday, threw some shorts and t-shirts in a bag on Saturday and headed off on Sunday.


We opted for an all-inclusive hotel thing this time, mainly because villas on Fuerteventura turned out to be so much more expensive than on the neighbouring island Lanzarote, and much more difficult to come by. At least the children will be happy, we thought, with other kids to play with and a "mini club" and all of those other exciting things that go on in hotels that boring old parents are no good at providing. (I secretly hoped that they might even become chummy with some British children and brush up on their English at the same time)


This plan backfired a little because, of course, once they'd made (exclusively French) friends the children certainly didn't want to go off and explore any boring old museums or unspoiled fishing villages, or volcanic landscapes. So we negotiated ..... every single trip outside of the hotel compound.


Happy children notwithstanding, next time, it will definitely be a villa. Not least because although the food was delicious; the rooms spacious and impeccably clean; the tropical gardens lush and the staff irreproachably smiley: the muzak drove us up the wall and the multilingual commentaries from the entertainment team reminded P of nothing so much as the daftie in The Name of the Rose (although I don't think there was any Latin involved). Unsurprisingly when you use four different languages in one high-speed sentence it comes out as meaningless Eurobabble even if all of the words are correct.


However, a bit of winter sun, as the brochures say, never did anyone any harm and Fuerteventura is a superb island. I'd like to go back sometime to explore further afield. More photos here, if you think you can take it.